~ This blog will be an attempt to explain the significance of various works of great writing, the authors that create them, and some effort to understand correlations between great writing and contemporary events.

There’s something about marines.I really can’t explain it. It’s like how there’s something about men wearing denim.Or men wearing leather.Or men wearing lipstick.Or men wearing cowboy hats.Or men wearing police uniforms.Or men wearing work boots.Or men with long hair.Or men with tattoos.Or men shopping for vegetables.Or men handling wood at hardware stores.Or men…actually, you know there’s just something about men period.Maybe that’s what lead me to Tom of Finland in the first place.

Justifying book purchases is getting more and more difficult, and my regular reader probably knows this already if they’ve ever read my homage to Christopher Hitchens.The space, or, really lack of it, is the primary concern, however there’s also now the issue of mortality.As I am just a few months away from turning thirty, and becoming yet another in a long line of cliched individuals who realize that they’re youth is quickly becoming a thing of the past, my concern now with purchasing more books is the worry that I won’t actually have time to read them all.This creates a compulsion towards priority.DO I really want to read that Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Andrew Jackson when I can’t fucking stand Andrew Jackson, and do I really need to sit down and read Finnegan’s Wake when I realize now that I will never read Ulysses ever again?There are some positives here, as I have realized more and more that there are books and topics that I legitimately want to read about.Whether it’s books about Ancient Greece, the Ottoman Empire, anything having to do with Queer identity, and the entire collected works of Vladimir Nabokov these are books that I will read and will make an effort to read.

And so as I reevaluate my priorities I can honestly write that I felt neither fear nor guilt in purchasing a $50 book about the work of Tom of Finland titled Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity, and Homosexuality.

I only feel guilty that, after the book arrived in the mail, I hopped into a couple volumes of the manga One Punch Man before actually reading it, but in my defense One Punch Man is freaking hysterical and I apologize for nothing.

I’ve written before about what Tom of Finland’s work has meant to me, as well as to the homosexual community.It’s not just that the man was able to help establish an unashamed model of gay porn for queer men to use and gravitate towards, it’s the fact that this pornography and art was able to validate the viewers with men who were attractive and quite visibly happy to be gay.No matter what Tom’s men were doing (sucking, fucking, sexually harassing postal workers) they always managed to find something to enjoy about being sexual with one another, or, to put it another way, they were having fun being gay.

This happiness helped establish Tom, real name Touko Valio Laaksonen, as one of the most important gay pornographers and artists, but this happiness, coupled with the fact that the men he drew were typically butch and traditionally masculine, did more for the queer male community who often had been regulated to the “fairy” and “queen” identity.Tom created a new model of masculinity for queer men, one they were happy to embrace.

Ramakers notes this as he observes the emergence of an unapologetic gay culture:

In the seventies, gay subcultural reality in the United States began to bear an even closer resemblance to Tom of Finland’s images of gay sexuality.According to sociologist Martin Levine, in that decade there was a noticeable growth in anonymous erotic activity.Gay meeting places were decorated with Western, leather, or high tech styles and sported “masculine” names such as The Eagle, Badlands, Ambush, Anvil and so on.In many bars, sparsely lit or darkened rooms were designated for cruising and tricking (spontaneous sex).Crusing and tricking became the sexual norm.Sexual techniques were rough and phallocentric and consisted mainly of “deep-throating” (blow job with the entire penis thrust down the throat), hard fucking (jamming entire penis into anus while spanking hard), and heavy tit work (robust sucking, pinching, or biting of nipples).(106-7).

Before I address this quote I really need to observe that the adjective “robust” always sounds gay to me.I don’t know what it is.Just saying the word “robust” it sounds like something a fairy (such as yours truly) would say while describing the repairman who showed up to fix his plumping.And then maybe, while he was working and trying to keep his long hair out of his face, his shirt would get wet and he’d have to take it off revealing a mess of thick black chest hair that would curl while light would reflect in the small beads of water clinging to…

Ramakers quote is important though because it reveals where queer men of the seventies were at sexually as well as personally.It’s easy to forget in an age of Grindr and Scruff and Tindr, but free and casual sex between men was actually quite would have to use codes to find one another, and even then men could find themselves accidentally exposing themselves to straight men who might not always be so happy to discover another man’s hand on their leg.Compounding this is the fact that, before the seventies, and even some-time after that, being open about one’s queerness could wind one up in a mental institution where there are all manner of nightmare stories.

The ability to suck and fuck, and be sucked and fucked, without fear of social reprisal was not only liberating it was revolutionary.And in this new erotic atmosphere men began to look for a new character to embody.

Ramakers points his reader to Martin P. Levine, who’s work I’ve reviewed in the past, but then tries to show that the push towards a more traditionally “masculine” culture was an effort by queer men to become something new.Rather than continue to the idea of the “invert,” or the feminine “fairy,” guys wanted to act and behave more like straight men, only with a lot more sex.And in this new desire for a masculine ideal, Tom’s work was a great boon.If the reader has never seen any of Tom’s work the first thing they will observe is, obviously, that it’s pretty gay.But after this observation what becomes obvious is the fact that his men incredibly masculine.Ramakers notes this earlier in his book when he observes:

Tom’s men are paper constructions of the ideal body, less a reflection of a particular reality than a representation of a social ideal or mental vision.Tom’s male bodies are reminiscent enough of reality to be credible, but just far enough beyond that reality to form a nigh unattainable ideal. (72).

Now Ramakers observes that body-building culture impacted this but then later on he observes how Tom accounted for this:

In the later years of his career, Tom attempted to retain idealization, by exaggerating his men’s muscles even further […].Because of this tendency, however, Tom’s man increasingly became a caricature: “when people criticized him for that, he would tell them, ‘I’m not trying for realism.I want to express our fantasies.’” (73).

Tom’s work was never, and has never truly been about capturing some kind of realism.While erotic art and pornography as an institution can at times create and capture the beauty of real and accurate sex, the fundamental purpose of the medium has always been to celebrate and enjoy sexuality, and in this action there is often a great desire for hyperbole.Looking through some of the many drawings Tom did over the course of his life (the man was amazingly prolific given the fact he began this art at a time where it could have cost him dearly) there is often a great amount of play in his drawings.

Breasts and shoulders tend to be well defined while hips and legs tend to be slimmer, although the buttocks can often be large and round.The men, regardless of race or nationality, tend to have similar bone structure in the face, becoming more or less the same copy over and over again.And, of course, the penises range from simply large to ridiculously gargantuan.

Not that I’m complaining but at some point one has to wonder how these men don’t throw out their back.

At this point the reader may question the immediate relevance of Ramaker’s book.So what?Why should I care about the analysis of pornography?There isn’t any redeeming value in smut, it’s just dudes banging each other so other dudes can jerk off.How could any of this be considered art?

As always my contester has some excellent points.It is important to recognize that Tom of Finland’s work was and still is considered pornography by a significant portion of the population, and because the work is homoerotic in nature his appeal is going to be largely limited to a number of queer men, some women, and then a few art critics bold enough to make a serious assessment of the man and his work.And, to be fair, the typical aesthetic goal of any erotic material is to inspire sexual arousal in the viewer, a sensation which is largely considered base and temporary in most people’s minds.Looking at this then, Tom’s drawings does not seem to have a great amount of relevance to many people.

But if I can make a solid enough case, this criticism reveals a larger truth about the perception of sexuality in our culture.Sex is often, at least as far as the United States is concerned, portrayed in the media in a dichotomy.While there is near constant reference to human sexuality, the lingering Puritanic trend in most Americans ensures that this sexuality is portrayed as obscene, disgusting, or even grotesque thus leading to “abstinence only” environments which have been demonstrated time and time again not to actually work.The conversation about sexuality is almost non-existent at the same time it is ever-present.

Tom of Finland entered my life entirely by accident, and since he did I’ve been able to explore a facet of my sexuality that feels not only true but liberating.In Tom’s leather-clad supermen I found my sexuality and discovered that while at time it could be a serious, all-consuming drive, it could also be something funny and enjoyable.Rather than feeling my desires as something grotesque or morally wrong, my sexuality, my attraction to women and men, was a chance to play and appreciate an idealized world where men could have sex freely without fear.And while there are probably few straight men that would gravitate to the man’s artwork, the spirit of the work is something that is, at least in my estimation, universal.

Sex is supposed to be fun, and Tom’s men are often smeared with the word pornography, they seem to find even in this distinction something to revel in.

And on the note of fear, Ramakers observes something incredibly powerful in Tom’s work:

Tom’s work is dedicated to the glorification of the male body, in all its vulnerability: his bodies are constantly being penetrated in every possible way and through every orifice.(165).

Soon or later every essay about gay sex leads to the anus, and those people who enjoy having their’s penetrated or stimulated.For the record I tried getting the previous sentence put on a t-shirt but the printers told me that they could move the shirts but there wouldn’t be enough room for the little cartoon anus I illustrated so I decided to scrap it.If I’m going to make t-shirts about anal penetration you can bet there’s going to be a cute cartoon anus on them.Integrity matters damn it.

I’ve written before about how the “problem” of penetration in gay sexuality has been discussed by writers and theorists and so I won’t bother my reader with long academic quotes that totally kill the vibe.The simple matter is often the practice of anal sex between men, and the frequent use of the “top/bottom” dynamic within the community, has lead to this perception that gay sex is simply about which partner acts “like the girl” during sex.What’s important about Tom’s work is that this dynamic is not only not apparent, it simply doesn’t exist.

Whether it’s construction workers, cops, sailors, soldiers, business men, or the leather-clad Kake himself, Tom’s men love to suck and fuck, and be sucked and fucked.And so while some readers used to the concept of a pure top/bottom dynamic may at first be bothered by Tom’s presentations, there is actually a real and powerful disruption in the man’s work.Tom’s men simply enjoy sex, and so rather than constructing identities where sexuality is limited to one action or one sexual organ, his men simply embrace the concept that they are sexual objects and beings and so they are willing to simply play with their sexuality.

Ramakers observes the power of this presentation:

Straight porn is for the most part based on the possession of the penis, which is used as a weapon against those who no not possess I.In Tom of Finland’s work it is precisely the penis that is possessed by both—or all—parties, thus unhinging that basic tenetfrom its supposed immutable position.This allows the power to fluctuate between partners, none of whom can lay claim to “natural” prerogatives on the basis of possession of the penis. (219).

Or to put it another way, nobody is the “girl” in Tom’s work because there aren’t any girls period.The matter of women being the weaker creature in pornography is well documented and in fact is its own essay.For now I simply wanted to focus on Tom’s work because, as I’ve written before in another essay about Tom’s work, the mode of sexuality presented is something I appreciate and respect.

Whether we like it or not, pornography is a staple of the culture, and more and more children will experience pornography as they develop into adults.In such an environment the importance of sexual education is important, but so is sexual representation.Whether it be gay or not, Tom of Finland’s work is an incredible presentation of sexual activity because it does not attempt to present sex as a power-play.Even at it’s most shocking and potentially violent, Tom’s men are not participating in a corrupt or revolting sexual display, they are simply trying to enjoy sex, thus crafting an image of masculinity and humanity that is liberating rather than constricting.

As a queer man, I don’t apologize for enjoying and consuming pornography because it’s an art which has allowed my exploration of self to take place.And I consider it a point of pride that I blame of Tom of Finland for most of my gay sexual development.In the pages of his work I found and fell in love with men who were strong (and “robust”) in a physical as well as personal way.And that in turn was a source of inspiration.My sexuality is something to celebrate rather than fear.

Dirty Pictures is a serious look at a genre of art that is often denied to the possibility for serious reflection and analysis, and as Tom of Finland’s work and life is recognized more and more by the culture such a book is a vital resource.Ramaker’s book is an inspiration for those of us who found solace in Tom’s work, and an inspiration to continue the legacy of the man long after he has died.In this way this review wasn’t just a chance to talk about gay sexuality, it was a chance to thank Ramakers for his book, as well as to thank Tom for his art.

Somewhere on the road there’s a leather-clad superman wearing a winged cock on his hat, and a smile on his face.And it’s because of Tom’s work that a generation of men made it possible for at least the latter to be not so shocking to us.Though as I write this I realize it might also just be because Terry Spots is doing another photo shoot in which case I’ll probably have to stop writing so I can disappear into Instagram for a few wonderful hours.

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from Dirty Pictures: Tom of fInland, Masculinity, and Homosexuality were quoted from the first edition hardback St. Martin’s Press edition.

I included this in a previous essay about Tom of Finland, but I’ll put it here again.This website totally and completely supports the work of tOm of Finland and those who try to maintain the legacy of the man’s art.In fact, one such organization is the Tom of Finland Foundation, a sort of museum, archives, community center which maintains the legacy of Tom of Finland, houses most of his work, and actually supports the work of other erotic artists working today.I mention this organization not just because I love Tom of FInland, but also because I’m a member of the Foundation and considered it one of the proudest moments of my life when I received my membership card in the mail.

If you love Tom of FInland, or at least would be more interested in learning more about the man’s work, I’ve included a link below to the FOundation’s website where you can contact them directly as well as see some of the various artists who have contributed to their organization.

I would also recomend, if you get the chance, visiting the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago.While their work is not dedicated solely to Tom of Finland, it was partly because of his art that the leather-scene took off in the United States and became not just an aesthetic but an entire lifestyle.Their museum and website is dedicated to collecting and preserving leather-culture and the various arts and artists and peoples who have helped establish the community.you can see their site by following the link below:

If the reader is at all interested I found a few articles and pages about the lasting significance of Tom of Finland and have included them below.Some of them have to deal with the new biopic film about Tom of Finland himself (which I do intend to watch and review at some point)Enjoy:

And finally, if you would be interested in reading (really seeing and owning) Tom’s work for yourself, I’ve provided a link to TAschen’s website where you can purchase some of the beautiful collections of Tom’s work.I would ABSOLUTELY recommend it:

Okay, seriously this time. THIS is the last thing I’ll say. Tom’s work was largely responsible for creating a “working-class” model of homosexuality thus shattering the illusion that queer men could only be upper-class-fairy-limp-wriested-fops. Not that there was anything wrong with being an effeminate queen (lord knows I am), but Tom essentialy gave queer men more room to find themselves, and this perception that anybody could be gay has allowed for some beautiful moments in art.

Case and point my all time favorite scene from The Simpsons. Homer thinks Bart is gay and so he takes him around to see several examples of burly-straight-men all of which turn out to be gay until it culminates in this moment of pure comedic genius.

The only other woman I had ever seen breastfeeding was my mother.I remember stumbling in on her feeding my little sister a month or two after she was born and then promptly shutting the door and going back to the living room to watch Swat Cats.This time it wasn’t my mother needlessly hiding herself away in her bedroom (though she might have just needed to be somewhere quiet and my near-constant Swat Cats marathon probably wasn’t what she needed) but was in fact a member of the graphic novel book club I’m a part of.The woman was unforgettable with her purple hair and Nightmare on Elm Street t-shirt, but what struck me was, while I was delivering my usual lecture, this time on the graphic novel Saga, she actually lifted up her baby, opened her shirt, and held her child up to her breast.I had never seen anyone breast-feed in public before, and seeing it sitting right next to me, I wasn’t entirely sure why anyone would ever have a problem with- it.The kid was hungry and it wasn’t affecting me personally, so I carried on explaining why I thought Saga, which was also decorated with a breast-feeding mother, just wasn’t an interesting book.

There was a woman who used to work at the library who I considered a close friend, and that’s why it hit me pretty hard when she announced that she was leaving the library for one in Dallas.I understood that her reasons were a combination of desire for better pay as well as to be closer to her boyfriend, but I have trouble finding people who seem to like me so I was pretty bummed.The only real sort of solace I had in the whole thing was that, because she was leaving, that meant that I would be the only person in the library who really knew the graphic novel section, and so, once my supervisors approved, I became the one responsible for shelving the graphic novels.This task is one that, to say I’ve warmed up to it is putting it mildly, I fucking love it.Pushing my green cart to the second floor I take a good 15 minutes a day just to rearrange the shelves, prop up new books for patrons passing through the area, arranging the tipped over or worn books up to their proper place, and while I am shelving I almost always find a fantastic book I want to read.One of them was Saga and, while I admit a moment ago I didn’t find the book terribly wonderful the first time I read it, looking at Marko and Alana on the cover there was the same impulse there always is, a little kid who read Calvin & Hobbes over and over and over again saying, “Check it out, you got a library card!”

I grabbed the first two volumes on my way back down to help a woman send a fax.

There’s too much of Saga to try and tackle all of it in just one essay, and I’m not even looking at just the first volume.While I’m writing this I’m currently on Volume six, and I’m positive by the time I finish this essay I’ll probably be at the last volume, (it’s up to eight right now) and become one of the I’m sure millions currently devouring this book every time it hits the shelves.I’ve also finished all of Sex Criminals so if I start appearing peaked it’s because I’ll be sucking comic-book writer’s dicks for new issues.My other real challenge is the fact that Saga is beloved, or, put it another way, Saga is the comic book that people who hate comics read.Being friends with the owner of Ground Zero Comics (though I suppose I’m being charitable he may not consider me a friend at all and now I look foolish) he’s often talking about his patrons who come in trying to their wives, girlfriends, etc. into comics, and while the first option is almost always Sandman Vol 2 The Doll’s House, Saga is the series he almost always cites as the second option.

It’s not hard to see why, given the fact that the series is written as one long emotional melodrama, and I don’t mean that pejoratively.Rather than superhero comics which are often defined by physical gods fighting the forces of evil in tight outfits and experiencing their own sort of melodramas (nobody ever really dies and there’s always a brother who’s supposed to be dead but who turns out to actually be alive or a clone or some shit), Saga is drama about family centered in race, specifically race mixing.Alana and Marko are people from different cultures, different races which are war with one another.Marko is from Wreath, the only moon of the planet Landfall the homeward of Alana.Marko’s people practice magic, whereas Alana’s people tend to gravitate more towards science and technology.Because war, meaning total destruction of each other’s planets, could potentially destabilize the orbits of their worlds the cultures have moved their war to other planets thus involving a wide variety of peoples in this conflict and creating universal destabilization.Marko becomes a prisoner of Landfall’s coalition where he meets and falls in love with Alana.And because people in love have a tendency to fuck, Alana becomes pregnant which is where the series actually begins.

The first page is memorable for a variety of reasons:

Allright, in all fairness, there’s really just one reason why this page is so striking: too many people forget that when babies are born they aren’t born with any original bacteria in their intestines to help with digestion.Because of this humans evolved so that it was common for a pregnant woman to void her bowels during labor so that the bacteria in her feces would introduce bacteria into the baby’s body.Now breast-milk is also a common way for mothers to transfer this bacteria, thus offering me another opportunity to remind my reader that breast-feeding is more important than your discomfort, but it should be noted that pregnant women also tend to poop because, well, shit’s happening.

But that first line, carefully outlining Alana’s reddened face is an important one because Brian K. Vaughn frames the narrative of Saga as first person narration in the veing of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Saga is the story of a woman named Hazel who is the product of an interracial union narrating her life story to her audience.She introduces herself, not as a person, not as an individual ego, but more of an idea.

This is how an idea becomes real.But ideas are fragile things.Most don’t live long outside at the ether from which they were pulled, kicking and screaming.That’s why people create with someone else.Two people can sometimes improve the odds of an ideas survival…but there are no guarantees.Anyway, this is the day I was born.(1-4).

Vaughn’s writing style is something I’ve had plenty of opportunities to explore and study and that’s largely because of my friend TJ.As I’ve noted in several of my previous essays, he’s the founder of the local Graphic Novel Book Club that meets bi-weekly at Ground Zero Comics, and because of this prestige position he gets to decide which books are read in the group.We’ve read quite a number of books over the years ranging from Understanding Comics to Transmetropolitian to Sandman to Fun Home, but many members have observed that, in the last year alone, we’ve read close to six or seven of the man’s books and this has lead some to label us the “Brian K. Vaughn appreciation society.”There is some disagreement upon this suggestion largely because we’ve also read plenty of Jeff Lemire.The coming war between the Vaughnites and Lemirians is coming and I’m not sure how many lives will ultimately be lost.

But this is just a way of saying that reading Saga is much like reading many of the other Vaughn books and the man has a real tendency to build up his spaces.Saga is not just an intimate love story between Alana and Marko, it’s an opportunity to observe countless species and peoples, all of whom are impacted by the war between the two races.The reader is sometimes bombarded by this enormous amount of oddity, and while the first time I was overwhelmed by this treatment, as time in the story progressed I became more and more used to the oddity of the humanity.And this I believe is its own sort of method.

Race is very much biological, your DNA will always determine your physical characteristics as well as plenty of facets of personality, but race is also rooted in cultural and individual psychology.Observing someone’s physical characteristics and observing difference is not racism, it’s only when one allows those observation of differences to form bias that the corrosive quality of racism manifests.

A racist is ultimately formed by a subculture that educates them that differences in physical characteristics such as skin color, or more abstract qualities such as language or nationality, are an indication of lesser worth.What’s incredible then about the graphic novel Saga is that, much like the Star Wars and Star Trek films before it, the reader is constantly exposed to individuals of different races and species intermingling without too much concern that such interactions are taking place.The reader is able to see the physical differences, and encouraged to just accept these characters as people.Whether it’s the Prince Robot IV and his television head, the floating ghost specter with half a body named Isabel, the half spider half human freelancer known simply as “The Stalk,” or my favorite character Petrichor a MTF transgender woman from Wreath.Saga encourages the reader to see that race is biological, but that racism is ultimately just the social construct because regardless of physiology, anatomy, or whether you’re a pothead actress made out of moss, people are people, and their qualities are what ultimately define them.

That would have been my end to Saga were it not for the fact that recently I’ve begun a new routine.With the rightful fall of Charlie Rose, my morning breakfast routine has been shaken up dramatically because I used to watch interviews and eat.I’ve now taken to watching Seth Meyers, The Daily Show, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and of course The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.This later one provides me with some news of the day and some means of maintaining my sanity as I watch the current administration do its…let’s say thing.I like Colbert, he makes me laugh, and he gives me something to think about when I’m shoveling my eggs, donuts, and tea down my throat as I get ready for work.Most recently however he interviewed Trevor Noah, complimenting him about his time on the Daily Show, revealing to the world that Noah had a brief appearance in the film Black Panther, and then asking him about the issue of race.It was during this last conversation that Noah reminded me about his eloquence, but then also about the larger narrative of racism in South Africa.

And during this interview Noah pointed out that, ultimately, his existence voided the larger racist narrative.If one race in power argues that race-mixing cannot produce offspring it voids and ultimately destroys the racist narrative to begin with.This shouldn’t have been such a powerful observation, but hearing him express it as such made me pause and really dwell on that statement.It also made me go back to his biography and look through a few of the passages.

Noah’s memoir Born a Crime doesn’t just mirror Saga, it could almost be its own spin-off.Noah imbues his life story with plenty of wit and humor, but constantly throughout the book he is able to demonstrate a real intelligence about the farce that was the governmental race policy of his home nation.

He writes in one chapter:

In any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn’t merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent.Race-mixing proves that races can mix—and in a lot of cases want to mix.Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.(21).

Looking then at Saga this is most certainly the case because Vaughn and Fiona Staples, the illustrator who deserves an entire essay to herself, show the family as constantly on the run from the two central organizations of their homewards who see their union as not just a threat to the larger war effort, but to the very war itself.The war between Wreath and Landfall is a racial war, it’s a war founded on the idea that the two races not only should not intermingle and interbreed, but that they cannot.Alana and Marko, and by extension Hazel is a rejection of that system.Its proof that the war is, ultimately, bullshit.

Noah’s biography goes on to note the length to which apartheid was ridiculous and cruel:

Laws were passed prohibiting sex between Europeans and natives, laws that were later amended to prohibit sex between whites and all nonwhites.

The government went to insane lengths to try and enforce these laws.The penalty for breaking them was five years in prison.There were whole police squads whose only job was to go around peeking through windows—clearly an assignment for only the finest law enforcement officers.And if an interracial couple got caught, God help them.The police would kick down the door, drag the people out, beat them, and arrest them.At least that’s what they did to the black person.With the white person it was more like, “Look I’ll just say you were drunk, but don’t do it again, eh? Cheers.”That’s how it was with a white man a black woman.If a black man was caught having sex with a white woman, he’d be lucky if he wasn’t charged with rape.”(22).

There’s a brief moment in Saga when Prince Robot IV is being briefed by a Landfall intelligence officer about the couple and the subject of Alana’s consent is mentioned.Alana’s pregnancy is observed and Robot IV says rather plainly,

“Love child?Surely he forced himself on her.” (24)

And this is, ultimately, everything.The narrative of the war and the races has become so ingrained in the zeitgeist, so embedded into the universal culture of Saga that two people of Landfall and Wreath falling in love and conceiving a child is not only inconceivable, it’s repulsive.There’s also the fact that throughout the text Marko’s people speak a language that often appears to be some sort of slavic tongue mixed in with Spanish which makes the theme of racism all the more potent.

Hazel as a character is an idea and a material reality for her very existence is a crime.Saga as a work of art then is not something that is just relevant it’s historical pertinent.Often the charge against graphic novels is that they are too fantastic, too hyperbolic, or else that they are too much like a melodrama or a soap opera.My argument against this charge is that while Saga is all of these things, it still manages to consistently say something about humanity which that we are more than the petty and paltry divisions which are used to allow suffering.

Rape camps, racism, sexual slavery, transphobia, and murder for hire are all concepts which are explored in the Saga Series, and while many would prefer that it didn’t exist, all of these concepts are realities that are still plaguing society.Saga doesn’t just create a new world, fill it with quirky languages and science fiction creatures for the sake of delving into high fantasy; the book is an effort to touch and explore that which is most human.Love is ultimately a biological imperative based in chemistry to get us to reproduce, but looking past this and seeing how we allow it to create meaning in our lives the story of Hazel is a story which, as Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime demonstrates, is an ongoing narrative.

People like to fuck, and people like to fall in love.Regardless of a person’s sex, gender identity, race, or nationality everyone has the capacity to love another human being.And this idea is powerful because love allows more than just two people to come together and find one another.People comes with families, friends, associations, organizations, creeds, and personal ideologies all of which expose each person of the relationship to new ideas and people which expand their world.

Talking about Saga, and watching that woman breastfeed beside me, was a chance to observe other people, to explore a new way of thinking, and listen to other people’s opinions about what the book meant to them.In a period and time when it feels more and more like human beings are looking for excuses and reasons to “other” each other (pardon that pathetic string of words) it speaks to the power of a book to ask its reader if those differences are really so profound that we can’t find some excuse to recognize another person’s humanity, and maybe see them as somebody we’d like to know, or fuck, or even love.

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from Saga Volume 1 were taken from the paperback Image copy edition.All quotes cited from Born a Crime were cited from the first edition hardback Spiegel & Grau copy.

**Writer’s Note**

I really wanted to cite Trevor Noah directly in this essay but it just didn’t work out that way.So instead here’s the original interview from The Late Show.Please enjoy, and please remember to take the time to appreciate that they got Trevor Noah to be an A.I. hologram in the movie Black Panther.

I didn’t get a chance to do it here, and maybe hopefully at some point I’ll have time to write a long treatise, but having now read the entrety of the Saga series run published thus far, my absolute favorite character, after Ghus, is Petrichor. I don’t know whether or not it’s because she’s beautiful or else because she’s hysterical, but I adore her more than anything in the world, and I admit with no shame whatsoever that I have the individual issue with her on the cover in my bookshelf.

I’ve never openly considered using any food for masturbation.I know being of the American Pie generation I was supposed to have stuck my penis in some sort of food at this point.Apparently the Millennial coming of age ritual, apart from eating tide-pods, snorting condoms, and killing virtually every sector of the economy according to snarky facebook posts your uncle leaves on your facebook page, is performing some sort of onanistic ritual with a pie, a piece of fruit, or anything sweet and delectable.This demonstrates a clear divide between the generations because, as Portnoy’s Complaint demonstrated, Baby Boomers had the luxury of getting their rocks off by jerking it into raw liver.There’s almost assuredly a writer out there somewhere who is going to write an essay about generational divides and the compulsion to fuck food, and it’s probably me, but I’d prefer to write a few more reviews of great films before I tackle food lust.

Apart from my wife, who reminds me everyday that I’m hers and hers alone and then laughs maniacally before adoring her kitty cats, the reason why I could never date another man is because it would almost assuredly end in violence or bloodshed.Now I’m not talking about Days of Our Lives Soap Opera bloodshed, where people are slapped and/or shot and hit the ground without starting to scream or hemorrhage out all over the credenza before Stefano’s evil twin drags the body away to clone the victim.Violence against LGBTQ couples and individuals, often referred to as Queer bashing, is a mode of violence that has unfortunately become almost tropic.If two gay people in a film love one another the ending will almost always imply that they cannot be together because straight people will not understand their love and will enact violence against one or both partners.

Perhaps the best example of this is the novella Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx. A melodrama about two ranch hands for hire who fall in love in the mountains of Montana, the pair are in bed together when Ennis explains why they can’t be seentogether:

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. It ain’t goin a be that way. We can’t. I’m stuck with what I got, caught in my own loop. Can’t get out of it. Jack, I don’t want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don’t want a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich—Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, nine years old, and they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They’d took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his dick until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like pieces a burnedtomatoes all over him, nose tore down from skiddin on gravel.”

“You seen that?”

“Dad made sure I seen it. Took me to see it. Me and K.E. Dad laughed about it. Hell, for all I know he done the job. If he was alive and was to put his head in that door right now you bet he’d go get his tire iron. Two guys livin together? No. All I can see is we get together once in a while way the hell out in the back a nowhere—” (29-30).

This violence is a threat to existence is often at the root of something in Queer literature often referred to as “Love that dare not speak its name.”Due often to the fact that homosexuality was often listed either as a sin, a vice, or as a mental disorder, homosexuals over the ages have had to bury their sexual and emotional passions, and those of us that were artists had to find a way to express our frustrations and desires through art.Often is two characters in a story were gay, or often as was the case hinted at being gay, then by the end of their story no matter how happy they were there had to be a ending in which they could not be together.Sometimes this resulted simply in heartbreak, but far more often it was the case that one or both partners wound up being killed.

The ‘Love that dare not speak it’s name” is a trope which has haunted queer literature and queer art for decades, even centuries and so when watching Call Me By Your Name I was waiting and expecting for it to happen.And in a way it did, Oliver and Elio did not wind up together, but not because there was anything wrong with their love.

The film, which is based on the novel by Andre Aciman, explores the life of Elio Perlman, the son of a jewish classical art professor.The family lives in Italy and occasionally hosts graduate students of Elio’s father while he performs his research.One such graduate student, an American by the name of Oliver arrives and very quickly catches the attention of Elio who is a teenager and developing his sexual and personal identity as he is on the cusp of adulthood.Elio explores his sexuality with a young woman who lives in town, but he finds himself more and more drawn to Oliver who appears distant until, over time, the pair of them eventually abandon themselves to a love affair.The story is about falling in love in a Pre-AIDS era and how two men were able to find one another, and for Elio, the story revolves around the discovery of his sexuality and the “first love” of his life.By the end of the film the pair of them do not wind up together, Oliver winds up marrying a woman while never completely abandoning his erotic truth.

This would at first seem to satisfy the old “Love that Dare Not Speak It’s Name,” henceforward referred to as LTDNSIN, no never mind that’s a terrible acronym, but watching the film and having read the novel I’m not so quick to slap that label on what is arguably one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever watched.Luca Guadagnino has made a visually stunning film that, even when it is not experimenting with camera angles, is just gorgeous to watch.Guadagnino captures the landscape and feel of Italy taking timeto film the peach trees, the ruins that litter the landscape, the pools of cold water in which the characters swim, or even simply the actual Italians themselves that call this beautiful country home.Elio and Oliver exist in a sort of timeless space caught between antiquity and the contemporary period of the early 1980s.And this attention to detail allows for the exploration of sensuality and sexuality of the characters.

In one moment of the film Elio and Oliver are discussing their mutual attraction beside a roman ruin and the camera follows them around the ruined edifice as they talk:

The scene is powerful for the shot Guadagnino uses and the way the music builds the dramatic tension.By the end of the scene, even though it doesn’t at first appear that much of anything has actually taken place, the reader feels that something powerful has happened in the film.

The love affair between Elio and Oliver was beautiful to watch, and I admit that the film made me nostalgic for the days when I was young, discovering myself, and falling in love.But for whatever reason the most powerful moment of the film was not any of the scenes between the two lovers, but a moment between Elio and his father after Oliver leaves the villa.Elio is emotional about the separation and he goes to speak with his father, and what occurs between the pair of them is arguably one of the most powerful demonstrations of affection between a gay child and a parent in recent cinema.

Mr. Perlman: Oh no, no, no. He was more than intelligent. What you two had, had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. He was good. You were both lucky to have found each other, because you too are good.

Mr. Perlman: I’m sure he’d say the same thing about you. Which flatters you both.

He clears through the suggestions and offers his honest take on the relationship,

Mr. Perlman: In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away. Pray their sons land on their feet, but… I am not such a parent.

He continues,

Mr. Perlman: Right now you may not want to feel anything. Maybe you neverwanted to feel anything. And maybe it’s not to me you’ll want to speak about these things. But feel something you obviously did. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!

And finally he offers his son, with obvious tears in his eyes, one last final offering.

Mr. Perlman: Have I spoken out of turn? Then I’ll say one more thing. It’ll clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you two have. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business, just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. And before youknow it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now, there’s sorrow, pain. Don’t kill it and with it the joy you’ve felt.

There were so many moments during Call Me By Your Name, where I found myself “remembering.”When Elio smells Olivers shirt I “remembered” the discovery of the sensual power of your partner’s smell.When Oliver masturbates into a Peach I “remembered” the early experiments with masturbation.When Elio tries to kiss Oliver I “remembered” the early attempts at demonstrations of affection and how some of them failed.Mr. Perlman’s talk with his son however was the only moment of the film where I felt a real emotion to the point that I was actually crying.I wish had I had a moment like that when I was young, and I wish I had had the courage to be myself, and have someone there to offer such a net.I wish I hadn’t been so afraid to just be who I really was, which was gay.

I love my parents, and I do not wish to speak out of turn towards them.I am who I am today because of them because they offered me endless love and support.All I am saying is, there might have been a different man writing this post if I had had someone in the form of a guardian who allowed me the language and space to feel safe acknowledging my attraction.

And this emotion isn’t just limited to myself, as Bret Easton Ellis points out on his review of the film, commenting first on Michael Stuhlbarg’s final speech,

And yet Stuhlberg sells it with a hushed technical virtuosity that makes every word land and vibrate even though at times he overdoes the saintly Jewish-Daddy thing. Stuhlberg makes this the real climax of the movie—it becomes a primal scene—and in the packed theater I saw the movie you could hear the gay men (at least half the audience) barely holding back muffled sobs. Call Me By Your Name is the movie generations of gay men have been waiting for: the fullest, least condescending expression of gay desire yet brought to mainstream film. It ends with a nearly wordless four-minute shot of a tear-stained Chalamet staring into a fireplace, a myriad of emotions subtly morphing over his face while the credits roll and which reminds us: there cannot be love without pain, the two are intertwined and intractable, and that the boy might be destroyed but a man will emerge and survive.

Mr. Perlman’s speech to his son can at times be just that, a speech.And speeches are, by their nature, a one sided affair where one person delivers their thoughts, sentiments, philosophies, and opinions with an understanding that this is a passive affair for the listener.What felt different while watching it was how the man seemed to be not just lecturing his son, but honestly trying to communicate to him.Mr. Perlman is a man who has obviously experienced great frustration in his life, but just as likely he’s a man who’s starved for desire.

Growing older is a sensation that is often defined by such starvation of spirit.I find myself wondering more and more “what do I want out of life, and shouldn’t I have figured it out by now?”And looking back only feeds such hunger as one feels the advantages of maturity and personal agency and wonders “why didn’t I take advantage of that?Why did I choose not to pursue this?”And this desire tends to feed a bitterness of spirit that can sap one dry.Sexuality especially can starve the soul and leave one often wondering, why was I not more ambitious, spontaneous, more confident, and Mr. Perlman’s speech offers a kind of closure for such pain.

But as Ellis points out, Call Me By Your Name wasn’t an opportunity to mourn the loss of love, but to recognize that love.Too often the “first love” of our lives are encouraged to be forgotten or cynically dismissed as foolish or naive, but such a recommendation is not only barbaric it’s false.That first love is real because it is felt with such profound passion that will never be repeated in our lives, and while some are fortunate enough to turn that love into a lasting commitment, often such passion just cannot last.What’s important about the film is not simply that the film is a “gay movie,” but that it’s a film which explores the first love of homosexuality and does not dismiss it as something obscene, foolish, or doomed.It’s instead portrayed as the first part of a long and beautiful life.

Call Me By Your Name is a film gay men have been waiting for for decades, centuries even.And like the sexual grace carved into the hellenistic statues of Greek Gods, it’s a sexuality that cannot be denied, nor ignored, long after the men who experienced and recorded it are just the dust beneath the treads of bicycle wheels.

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from Call Me By Your Name were provided by IMDB.com.All quotes taken from OUT’s review of Call Me By Your Name were provided by their website.If the reader is interested in reading the full review I’ve provided a link below:

I’ve taken the liberty of supplying a few reviews of the film and novel Call Me By Your Name below in case the reader would like a few more opportunities to read about the film instead of just taking my biased opinion.

In case the reader was curious, I really didn’t have any rhyme or reason for including the image below into the essay. I just typed in “supergay” into Google Images and I got this wonder. I used it as the temprary “Featured image” while I waited to get around to editing this one, and by the time I had everything ready I didn’t need it anymore, but I didn’t want to give up this guy because, he’s, well, perfect.

I’ll never forget the wall of vibrators. When facing a wall of pink and purple and black fake rubber cocks one has either to erase the experience from one’s mind, or else one has to realize you’ve pushed yourself past the point of no return and now you’re actually considering purchasing a vibrator or a dildo. I have my wife to thank for this experience however, since she was the person who took me to my first sex-shop.

Open Minds is a store that is labeled “Tyler’s Best Kept Secret,” a nickname that reveals the fundamentalist mentality of the town, not to mention the two-faced nature of my hometown. People like to fuck and masturbate but nobody likes to admit to it. Having grown up in Tyler my whole life I was shocked when my wife, then girlfriend, informed me that there was a “sex-shop” in town. Painful as it is to admit I was still virginial in my world-view, and believed sex-shops were something one only found or experienced in major urban cities like New York or Amsterdam. Sex-shops were gross, creepy places manned by sexual deviants who peddled blow-up dolls and leather gear for serial killers, or at least that’s what television and Sunday-school had taught me. That’s hyperbole obviously, but the sentiment is still true. Tyler was a sex-starved city and the thought that there might actually be a store where one could buy sex-toys and pornography was shocking, and slightly unbelievable. Nevertheless my wife insisted and, curious to see it for myself, she and her roommate took me to Open Minds and altered my world forever.

I found, after walking into the place, that the store was actually non-threatening. Yes there were dildos everywhere, but they were sold as aids for personal pleasure. There were shelves of “flavored” lube which could be opened and “sampled” without fear of catching STIs. The staff, who were eccentric in their personality but queerly normal at the same time, were happy to show us products, put batteries in the vibrators to give us demonstrations of the “levels,” and even offered us personal opinions about the varieties of lubes on display. I left the store feeling comfortable, satisfied, and most importantly, with a feeling that I had done something both for my relationship with my wife and for myself.

Ever since then sexuality is something I approach, not as a taboo, but just something people do, and I guess that’s what led me to Buzz.

Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy by Hallie Lieberman was a book I discovered on Amazon during one of my endless searches for new materials about human sexuality. I’d love to be able to say I discovered the book at my local Barnes & Noble or the PeaPicker, but alas, as I noted before, Tyler is not really “that” kind of town. I can’t remember what I was searching for, but for whatever reasons the word vibrator or dildo was in the search bar and Buzz was the first book to appear. The cover struck me immediately. A labia-pink parenthesis held the the vertical title which hovered below another pink asterisk which was an obviously play on the lay-out of the vulva.

Any book which was willing to use punctuation to create yonic imagery (stuff that looks like vaginas) is a must own and so I hit “add to cart” immediately.

Reading Buzz I recognize that I went into the experience with a bit of bias. I am a feminist, and I am a philosophical defender of the practice of masturbation. Anyone who would argue against the physical merits of self-love are either asinine zealots or just people who just hate their body. Obviously I’m biased in this matter, some might argue because I’m a man and therefore my masturbation is far more obvious and less complicated, but in my time I’ve observed that the paranoia which surrounds masturbation is just something of a fallacy. The idea that masturbation could lead to anything other than personal satisfaction is just ludicrous, and Lieberman’s book tries to ultimately follow the same point.

One of the earliest and most potent examples involves a woman who was arrested simply for selling sex-toys:

After I’d returned home later that night, I looked up the story my mentor had told me. I learned that the arrested woman had not been some left-wing free speech advocate but a forty-three-year-old churchgoing Republican mother of three named Joanne Webb. Local police had responded to rumors that Webb was selling sex toys by setting up a sting operation. Two officers posing as a couple went to Webb’s husband’s construction business where she worked the front desk and asked to buy some sex-toys. […]

For her violation of Texas’s anti-sex-toy laws, Webb faced a possible year in prison and up to $4,000 in fines, all for selling a couple of vibrators. Passion Parties started a Joanne Webb Defense fund and raised more than $10,000 for her legal team. Webb’s charges were eventually dropped, but not before she spent thousands on legal fees. And, perhaps even worse, Webb was shunned in the community. (6-7).

This story for me personally is one of the many instances in which I have to shake my head and shudder and remind myself that as much as I love my home state of Texas, there are times that I just shudder from the level of stupidity. What’s important about this passage however is not just that the incident took place, but that the actual arrest took place in 2004. It’s easy to forget or believe that society is at a point in time where someone selling vibrators or dildos would be free to do so without legal recourse, but a book like Buzz reminds the reader that that mental acclimation is due largely the hard labor, and often pain, of a number of individuals who turned the sex-toy industry into the common-place staple that it is today.

Buzz is not a book simply about the way that dildos and vibrators have been made or used over time. In fact the book is largely an exploration of the sex-toy industry during the 20th century, the economics of the industry which often was a turbulent non-stop legal battle, and ultimately how vibrators crafted a difficult feminist philosophy that often reverted back to the same question: are vibrators a replacement for men?

When it came to vibrators, there was some reason for men to be concerned. Their fear was nor completely unfounded. As one customer wrote to Eve’s Garden, “P.S. My lover is afraid a vibrator will replace him—he may be right!”

Did vibrators cause women to end their marriages? At least one letter to Dell Williams points to yes. Can the vibrator be solely to blame? Probably not. As Louis C.K. says, “No good marriage has ever ended in divorce.” But vibrators may have offered the push to get women to open their eyes to another world of sexual possibility. Vibrators did change women’s lives for a very simple reason: they gave women the first orgasm of their lives. These weren’t teenagers either; they were women in their thirties and forties. A first orgasm is memorable at any age, but to have one after years of sexual relationships is even more profound. These women began to question why, after decades in a relationship, they had never felt sexual satisfaction. And they began to wonder what else their lives had been lacking, which led them to question the gender roles that had defined their lives. (182).

A piece of phallic shaped silicon with a little motor embedded inside could help an individual person reevaluate their entire life. It almost sounds ridiculous were it not for the fact that there are mountains of testimony to the contrary.

This passage is significant to the reader however, because it is a point that is repeated several times throughout Buzz, and Lieberman’s intentionally repeating this point for effect. The ongoing charge against sex-toys, specifically vibrators, is that they divorce people from real sexuality, and instead promote an artificial sexual reality where people can just pursue pleasure rather than form lasting relationships. Most of this criticism is founded in patriarchal and religious speakers who see masturbation in women as a distraction from women’s “traditional role” as mothers, baby-makers, and wives. The vibrator is a real feminist challenge to this position because if a woman discovers that sexual satisfaction can be found by simply masturbating, rather than sexual intercourse with another man, she may not be so inclined to settle down with a man who “might” give her an orgasm.

She might also consider lesbianism, but that’s for another essay.

And this is difficult for me because, while I am a feminist and I do believe women have every right to own and use vibrators without fear or guilt, as a man the vibrator honestly scares the shit out of me. The defining trait of masculinity is the ego; which is another way of saying men like to feel important and powerful. This ego is especially heightened when it comes to sexuality, as men are typically reared on action films like Commando,Predator, and The Expendables where powerful men solve problems through fighting, blowing shit up, and of course delivering women to outstanding orgasms.

The reality however is that most women fake orgasms (I know right, alert the media), and often it’s the case that vibrators are the only way they are able to get off. In my own marriage my wife and I have come to an happy understanding about our sexuality, but because I suffer from depression, and because I’m always denigrating myself emotionally and sexually the vibrator for me is often a problem. Why would a woman ever want to be with me sexually if she could just buy a vibrator? This is a question I’ve never found a satisfactory answer to, and whenever I ask my wife this question she usually tells me that I need to stop worrying and that she loves me. Because my brain is dysfunctional however, the paranoia still lingers.

The reader may question me then, why then would I take the time to read a book like Buzz? If vibrators leave you intimidated and worried about the sexual health of your relationship, why read an entire book about them? That just sounds like masochism.

To this I respond that, even if I do have my own hang-ups about vibrators I still am an ardent defender of masturbation as an act, and as a mode of personal discovery. The first time I ever masturbated the experience changed me forever, and I felt that my body was no longer what it was before. My first ejaculation was the moment in which I began to recognize that I was a person with agency, and that my body could make me feel wonderful whenever I wanted it to. If I am allowed that privilege, so is anybody else, and no one should have to fight to masturbate.

Lieberman notes then that to the feminist movement, vibrators weren’t just a challenge to patriarchy, they were a philosophical weapon for personaland political liberation. A woman who used a vibrator, and had an orgasm for the first time in her life, discovered herself and discovered that she could be who and what she wanted to be. Once a woman was in control of her own body, she could then assume agency in other areas of life as well.

Lieberman observes this as she discusses the book Liberating Masturbation by Betty Dodson, an important and recurring woman through Buzz who began workshops for women where they could masturbate and discover themselves:

Liberating Masturbation was one of the first books about Masturbation ever to be written by a woman. Merely writing this book was a political act, but the message inside it was also explicitly political. Women should masturbate, Dodson argued because “sexuality and economics” are inextricably intertwined. “Ultimately [sexuality and economics] are not separable—not as long as the female genitals have economic value instead of sexual value for women. Saving sex for lover/husband was my gift to him in exchange for economic security—called “meaningful relationship” or”marriage,” she said. Women lost in this exchange because married sex was usually unsatisfying as it was routinely missionary style, and women rarely had orgasms. Many women were faking orgasms for financial stability. Basically, Dodson was reframing an older feminist argument that marriage was aform of prostitution. Although the kernel of the argument wasn’t new, the solution to the problem was: masturbation. (145).

Buzz is a book that really digs into the complicated past and philosophies that have governed the sales, ownership, and usage of sex-toys over the twentieth century, and the fact that as a society we’re still discussing them hints at their lasting potency. People have seen concrete realities in vibrators that range from the liberating to the depraved and each person has their own experience and personal story. For myself it was going to Open Minds with my wife and seeing that wall of pink plastic cocks and discovering that, rather than be intimidated or shocked, I found myself comfortable. And looking at the closing passage of Buzz, Liberman comes to more-or-less the same conclusion.

Sex toys can’t change the world on their own. But the people making them, selling them, using them, and talking about them can. At the end of the day, I realized my obsession with sex toys wasn’t just about the technology itself, but it was about the meaning of it. Sex toys can mean so many things to so many people, and not all of these things are good. They can be used to promote monogamy or polygamy,repressive gender roles or female independence. Sex toys can be used to help handicapped people have better lives and to help women have their first orgasms. To me, sex toys symbolize hope because what I see when I look at a sex toy is the people who I profiled in this book, the people who woke up one day and wanted to change the world. And they thought to themselves that a dildo was the way to do it. I am one of those people. And I am no longer embarrassed. (292).

It may seem to the reader a ridiculous belief to see something in vibrators anything other than sex. But to this point I would remind the reader that human beings, apart from our arrogance as a species, are defined by our imaginations and our will to create meaning. Whether it was lightning bolts or earthquakes, humans fashioned pantheons of gods to explain natural phenomena, out of the stars in the sky humans developed constellations and astrology, out of animals human beings made totems to explain personalities, and out of our sexualities humans have crafted stories, myths, statuary, art, and even sex toys. Human beings are a meaning-making species, and no level of our culture is immune from that.

Dildos and vibrators are part of the larger narrative of human sexuality, and while it may be an artificial sexuality, it’s just a sign of the changes taking place in our culture that have origins to our earliest biological origins. Lieberman notes from the start that animals have been found to use sex-toys, and some of the earliest human tools discovered were dildos and butt-plugs. Sexuality and procreation is at the core of every technological innovation and Lieberman is yet another in a long line of historians and writers taking note of how humans have used sexuality to explore and expand their economics and philosophy.

The vibrator in your girlfriend’s sock-drawer may seem intimidating at first, but take heart in the fact that its probably just a feminist tool to overthrow misogynist patriarchal orders reinforced by bad pulp-fiction erotic novels that reinforce negative stereotypes about female sexuality in the post-modern period. And, just for the record, it’s also there to give her an orgasm, so don’t take it too personally.

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes taken from Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy were cited from the Hardback, first-edition Pegasus Books edition.

**Writer’s Quotes**

I’ve found and provided links to several articles concerning the arrest and release of Joanna Webb. If the reader would be at all interested please feel free to follow the links below:

I’m a firm believer in supporting local business. The retail economic system is steadily imploding as giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are able to mass produce and outsell even massive chains like Walmart and SEARS. That’s why, if the reader is able to find the book at their local bookstore or library I would encourage them to read the book there. But if you can’t here’s a link straight to the book.

I recognize that I am not the ONLY source on the internet telling people to read books. I would to be able have that Monopoly because then it would give me more time to write, but alas I am not a solipsist and I recognize that multiple opinions are important. As such I’ve provided several links to articles about Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy below. Please Enjoy:

I’ll admit that I wanted it both ways. And yes, that is a bisexuality pun.

My regular reader will remember, because I won’t shut up about it, that I’m bisexual. My graphic novel memoir I Like Dick, I Like Vagina, I Like Me is still several years away at this point but that’s only because the publishers fail to see my brilliance and so I languish in obscurity. Because I’m married however, and because my wife and I hold to a “No Sharing” policy, exploring my sexuality is often limited to the wonderfully perverted world of Tumblr or else my traditional outlets, books. There’s a problem on this second front because as I said before I want it both ways, and this time it’s not a pun. I have been, since I started reading works about Queer theory, looking for a book which would explore queer male sexuality while also not being ungodly academic.

Surprise surprise this has been difficult.

Most writing about sexuality between men remains rigidly fixed in academic analysis in which case your spending most of your time reading about Freud or Marxian realities inherent to Postmodern identity politics. The other alternative is pornography, and as I stated before, Tumblr exists and seems to do a far better job at it then most erotic male writers I have read. What has always been missing in book after book of male-male erotica is some level of intellectual exercise. Reading about X putting his dick in Y’s mouth and or anus can be fun, but after a while the characters become archetypal nobodies and I wanted to explore sexuality not just scratch an itch. It seemed then that there wasn’t any book out there where I could really get another person’s perspective on their sexuality in a way that was physically and psychological satisfying.

Until Half Price Books. This chain has largely been responsible for whatever emotional development I’ve had with my sexuality because unlike the bookstores in my home town of Tyler, Texas, they carry (unashamedly I might add) an entire section dedicated to gender, sex, and sexuality books. On yet another of my family’s recent pilgrimage to Dallas I headed for the LGBTQ Studies after cleaning up in the dollar section, and my cart filled up within a space of five minutes. Most of my books were studies of queer male sexuality or their history and so when I spotted I Like it Like That: True Stories of Gay Male Desire it was just one of the many books in the pile. It was a few minutes later when I was vetting my pile that I took the time to figure out what I was buying, and after reading just the back cover I knew I had to own this book.

I Like It Like That is not just a collection of testimonials for I’ve read and still own several books like that. Most books about queer men tend either to be outright pornography, or else testimonials about their first time or about their coming out. Books like that are valuable and should be read and studied, but again there was always something missing for me whenever I read them. The way my own mind works I always prefer a work that takes the time to introspect or analyze a condition or situation. The men writing their personal essays are not just describing their sex life, they’re offering assessments and deeper understandings of what sex has meant to them, or how it has changed their life, or shown in what way they have explored or expressed their sexuality. Each essay acts alone and independently from the other, but while reading this book each essay feels like it’s is arranged in reaction to others so at times the book is like reading a group of men talking together about their sexuality. The best part about the collection however is the actual range of sexual expressions that are understood and discussed. One article titles Tom Selleck’s Mustache is one man’s realization that he possesses a fetish for mustache’s in general and therefore kissing men with mustache’s is his favorite erotic act. Another essay, which is in fact a comic strip, titled Amanuensis is a short story about a top who helps two husbands who are both bottoms. Big Black Daddy-Dick, or The Joys of Being Fetishized is really everything the title suggests as a middle aged black man explores the pleasure derived from others who look at him and his dick in a kind of worship. Bathhouse Desires covers the territory of a man visiting a bath house for the first time and feeling lost in lust and desire. Straight Guy Fetish explores a personal essay of a man caught in a one sided relationship with a straight man. And finally Evil Bear Man is a comic strip about a man who works as a fetish escort and has sex with his boyfriend in front of his client dressed up as Batman and Robin.

This last one, for the record, is my favorite only because I couldn’t stop laughing while reading it.

This basic list serves to demonstrate what an odd and wonderful book I Like it Like That really is for the reader interested in exploring libidos. Reading these essays feels so personal because too often the subject of sex is something that is hushed up or hidden. But something powerful happens when a writer opens their secret heart and shows you something. To wit, observe just one passage from the essay The Weight of My Desire:

I like men. And I like that I like men. But more than that, I like that you like them too. […] Sometimes, I think, the only thing greater than my desire for a man is my desire for his hunger. Do you know what I mean? His yearning to touch, or be touched by, another man. His willingness. His lust. His lack of inhibition. The thought that maybe just the book of another man’s smile is enough to get him hard. That perhaps even you might think of me and quiver. That I might hold the power to do that to you. Then I could pull you close, press your forehead into mine, and gaze into your eyes as we fuck. And in your eyes I will see that you like it. I will hear it on your warm breath and in the wet sound of your tongue on my skin. We are not that different, you and I. Your balls ache the way mine do. (207-8).

It’s incredibly painful to me how long it took for me to be able to read the first two sentences and agree with them. For the longest time I hid behind the random imitation of the “fairy” whenever the issue of same-sex intimacy between two men was brought up. Whenever I would discuss Benedict Cumberbatch or Michael Fassbender I would become fay and limp-wristed and raise my voice to sigh dreamily. I still sigh dreamily after Michael Fassbender for the record because…because…Ahem

Ahem. And Jason Moma is…

…well…yeah. The point is though while reading this passage I recognized the similar physical sentiment, “your balls ache the way mine do,” but I also recognized how much I had grown into my own comfort of my sexuality. Being attracted to another man wasn’t funny, or at least wasn’t just funny. It could also be real, and it could also be something to enjoy about myself.

Having said that though humor is important especially when dealing with sex. That’s why Evil Bear Man is without doubt my favorite essay in the collection. The fact that it’s also nothing but comics doesn’t hurt either.

The essay is about a fetish escort who gets paid by one of his clients to dress up as Robin and “break in” to his apartment so his client can pretend to be a villain by the name of Evil Bear Man. Evil Bear Man’s evil scheme? To force Batman and Robin to fuck.

With the help of his boyfriend, who plays the role of Batman, the pair of them eventually play out the fantasy for the client who enjoys a nice, quick wank. The description is enough to make even the most patient and open-minded reader to stop and ask the question: why should I be giving a damn about this. With the incorporation of images this moment sounds like nothing but pornography? But looking back over the essay again I can counter this immediately. Pornography is designed to titillate and arouse the viewer and/or reader of the work. Evil Bear Man works to occasionally arouse the reader, but often Justin Hall, the writer and illustrator who’s work I have appreciated in other books such as Boy Trouble and True Porn, breaks the serious erotic’s to show small moments of humility. His boyfriend complains about the utility belt, on the way over a kid tells him that the Robin outfit looks gay, after the client has paid he hopes the pair of them don’t laugh too hard and of course they do, and at the end the pair of them eventually continue to fuck in the outfits while the onomatopoeias of BLAM, WHAM, and KER-POW pop up between the phrases “Take it.” Anyone who watched the old Adam West Batman like I did surely remembers this and having them subverted, or perverted if you prefer, was funny and charming.

The point is while the reader observes this small tale they explore the fantasy of the client and observe how the escort and his boyfriend eventually perpetuate it, both together, and also to the reader. The individual reading the book I Like It Like That, is most likely someone who will derive some kind of erotic interests from the essays being presented and so there’s an invitation to not only observe the little distractions that can take place during sex (you always wind up placing your weight on their hair for some reason), but also to see if maybe some part of you isn’t also slightly turned on by watching Batman and Robin fuck.

I’ve never had a Batman fetish myself, and I still don’t. However, studies of tumblr have demonstrated that even without my participation this fantasy will continue into the future.

I’ve probably said more than I need to in order to the pique the interest of the reader who’s willing to sink $20 into a nice slim little book of erotic essays, but as always my point in these writings isn’t just to review books. Anyone who wants a quick review should try Goodreads. These essays are about my own exploration and so I prepare for my contester who interrupts me to ask, “Why should I bother picking this book up? I’m not gay, I’ve never had any gay feelings. Why should I waste my time reading about a bunch of gay men having sex?”

To this criticism I really don’t have much of a defense. If you’re a straight guy this book probably doesn’t offer much for you. I’m sorry but that’s where it stands. Though it should be noted that there is a small populace that call themselves straight who engage in same-sex activity, but that’s for a later essay.

Buying the book, and taking the time to write this out I wasn’t really writing for straight men. I wasn’t writing for gay men either. And in fact I wasn’t writing to any men at all, simply myself. As I noted before, my bisexuality is an odd creature because it can only exist in an odd erotic space. Because I don’t want to cheat on my wife, but because I also am unwilling to hide my, what Alison Bechdel calls in her brilliant graphic novel Fun Home “Erotic Truth,” this books is a real gift. It affords me the space to explore my sexual feelings towards other men without violating my marriage or without making me feel guilty.

And, along with helping me find my sexual self, it also affords me a few opportunities to think. Such as the following passage from the essay The Truth of His Nakedness:

It wasn’t about sex. Until it was. But it took me years to realize that nothing had really changed. These days, my nakedness is usually reserved for sexual situations, but that only reinforces the point—the erotic space is the same. The erotic space is the space of unavoidable truth. The erotic space is who I am.

[…]

In the end, all there is nakedness: two bodies coming together, sharing their common humanity, their naked vulnerability, the ultimate truth that we are not alone. (184-5).

The essays in I Like it Like That, much like this review/reflection of the entire book, finds its heart in the preceding passage because everything about these essays is about nakedness. “Naked” as a word always suggests vulnerability and by exposing your body, and by extension your desire to another person there is always a risk. Writing these words, and publishing them on the internet for all the world to see is a risk because there will always come those who will reject my desire, and by extension my person in general. I’ve listened to horror stories from some of my friends in the queer community and so I do not write and publish this essay without some reservation. It would be a mistake though to suggest that this was purely about the actual act of sex, because these essays prove sex is not only about the act of inserting something up an anus, into a mouth, or into a vagina. Sex is about a space in which desire is allowed to breath and be and the only way for a person to figure out what they “like” is to find some kind of space in which to work with.

Queer men exist in a wonderful space in which to explore their desire, and I’m happy to contribute to it in any way I can, even if it’s just suggesting a book through this shitty blog.

Looking over these words I’ve reminded myself that the reason I’m able to be and exist is because of the agency and space I possess. Others aren’t nearly so lucky. I’ll probably never have sex with another man, and while there is some sadness in this declaration there is still a happiness in recognizing I have enough “space” to openly acknowledge it’s still something I would like.

And if that “space” should ever include Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch, well, I mean, I wouldn’t complain. Would you?